The second season of Marvel’s What If…? debuted on Disney+ today, once again bringing Marvel fans stories from across the multiverse. During a special screening of the series a couple of weeks ago, some of the creators of the series sat down to answer questions about planning for season two, introducing a new character and more.
The Q&A included director and executive producer Bryan Andrews, writer and producer Matthew Chauncey and writer and executive producer A.C. Bradley.
We as fans know Marvel plans things out for quite a long time, but it was surprising to hear just how long they had been planning on a second season for this animated series.
“I think it was summer of 2019,” Bradley said about when they initially decided to do a second season. “That’s how crazy animation is. We knew in the back half of 2019 that this was going to happen. We wrote this episode, me and Matt, the Christmas episode, during the start of the pandemic.”
Chauncey was asked about comparing his work between live-action Marvel projects and his work on this animated series.
“I think the great thing about this show is that, creatively it’s as close as you can get to kind of reconnecting with that sense of play that I think we all fell in love with Marvel as kids,” Chauncey said. “Working on the show, it’s kind of like we’ve all got our action figures out we’re dumping them on the carpet and mixing and matching. And so it;s been a great place where you get to work on all the different characters, all the different tones, whatever.”
Andrews teased that this second season will start to get further and further away from the existing Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“I think as it progresses, we get to move slightly away from some of the MCU movies. Like, we know, these are the characters and here’s something we’re riffing on, but we can get a little bit wilder as the seasons progress,” Andrews said. “And I think we see that in season two. Things get crazy.”
Chauncey expanded on that idea a bit as well.
“Part of the fun is that we have all of the toys that the MCU has to offer but none of the responsibility of it having to be exactly fitting in this larger narrative,” Chauncey laughed. “But the challenges, we only have sometimes 22 minutes to tell these stories but the hope is that, unlike some of the live-action movies that deal with multiverse stuff, What If…? is the show where you actually get to live in these alternate realities for the whole story so hopefully it’s like filling in that larger canvas and kind of creating the stakes of the multiverse for those live-action movies because I think sometimes, when you’re dealing with the multiverse you’re like ‘oh if there’s an infinite number of Peggy Carters, what does it matter if you lose one?’ But I think hopefully our show is making you invest in all of these worlds and all of these characters so that you realize everything in this multiverse really does matter.”
And as far as the episodes getting a little more out there, Bradley teased the upcoming “1602″ episodes as fitting that bill.
“That was the one where we kind of had the most fun. We kind of went a little nutty and just like, ‘what’s the weirdest we can get with these characters? What is the most different outfits and personas that we can put them through?’” Bradley said. “I don’t want to talk any more about it but people who have read the comic kind of probably know what I mean.”
Andrews also jumped in to touch on that episode as bit.
“The cosplay potential is off the chain with that episode too,” he added. “We can’t wait.”
One of the highlights of this new season is the introduction of a new character names Kahhori, a young Mohawk woman who interacts with the Tesseract. Bradley touched on how her episode became a collaborative effort.
“We got Disney diversity on the phone, and we told them the episode and they were like ‘we’re going to call the Smithsonian.’ And I was like ‘do you have the Bat phone? Are we allowed to do that?,’” Bradley laughed. “They were like ‘yeah, the Smithsonian, they have the museum of Native American, they have the rolodex, let’s get them involved.’ And so from day one we were talking to people, we brought them in for everything from design, story, costuming, music. It was really a collaborative effort and we were so lucky to get all the help. It was really kind of amazing and beautiful and I’m very, very proud that we were able to pull that episode off.”
During the fan portion of the Q&A, some love was given to Howard the Duck and the idea of the character receiving his own series was thrown out there.
“I actually have said this to Seth Green,” Andrews said. “But who know what will happen with the Marvel stuff.”
The group was also asked about where they see Marvel going with animation in the future.
“They’re excited about the other animated shows that Marvel Studios is working on,” Andrews said, speaking of the team at Marvel. “I think they hope to continue and do more because we get to see a wide array. It’s like going to the comic book shop and seeing these different art styles like the stand with different comics, it’s like all these different shows with different looks, different feels, different voices. I think that’s exciting and I think they want to do more of it.”
New episodes of Marvel’s What If…? season 2 will debut daily between now and December 30 on Disney+.